The great day dawned misty and overcast, but the glass was high and we had no fears. The mist was a good sign. It cleared about eleven, as Maxim had foretold, and we had a glorious still summer’s day without a cloud in the blue sky. All the morning the gardeners were bringing flowers into the house, the last of the white lilac, and great lupins and delphiniums, five foot high, roses in hundreds, and every sort of lily.
Mrs. Danvers showed herself at last; quietly, calmly, she told the gardeners where to put the flowers, and she herself arranged them, stacking the vases with quick, deft fingers. I watched her in fascination, the way she did vase after vase, carrying them herself through the flower room to the drawing room and the various corners of the house, massing them in just the right numbers and profusion, putting color where color was needed, leaving the walls bare where severity paid.
Maxim and I had lunch with Frank at his bachelor establishment next door to the office to be out of the way. We were all three in the rather hearty, cheerful humor of people after a funeral. We made pointless jokes about nothing at all, our minds eternally on the thought of the next few hours. I felt very much the same as I did the morning I was married. The same stifled feeling that I had gone too far now to turn back.
The evening had got to be endured. Thank heaven Messrs Voce had sent my dress in time. It looked perfect, in its folds of tissue paper. And the wig was a triumph. I had tried it on after breakfast, and was amazed at the transformation. I looked quite attractive, quite different altogether. Not me at all. Someone much more interesting, more vivid and alive. Maxim and Frank kept asking me about my costume.
“You won’t know me,” I told them, “you will both get the shock of your lives.”
“You are not going to dress up as a clown, are you?” said Maxim gloomily. “No frightful attempt to be funny?”
“No, nothing like that,” I said, full of importance.
“I wish you had kept to Alice-in-Wonderland,” he said.
“Or Joan of Arc with your hair,” said Frank shyly.
“I never thought of that,” I said blankly, and Frank went rather pink. “I’m sure we shall like whatever you wear,” he said in his most pompous Frankish voice.
“Don’t encourage her, Frank,” said Maxim. “She’s so full of her precious disguise already there’s no holding her. Bee will put you in your place, that’s one comfort. She’ll soon tell you if she doesn’t like your dress. Dear old Bee always looks just wrong on these occasions, bless her. I remember her once as Madame Pompadour and she tripped up going in to supper and her wig came adrift. ‘I can’t stand this damned thing,’ she said, in that blunt voice of hers, and chucked it on a chair and went through the rest of the evening with her own cropped hair. You can imagine what it looked like, against a pale blue satin crinoline, or whatever the dress was. Poor Giles did not cope that year. He came as a cook, and sat about in the bar all night looking perfectly miserable. I think he felt Bee had let him down.”
“No, it wasn’t that,” said Frank, “he’d lost his front teeth trying out a new mare, don’t you remember, and he was so shy about it he wouldn’t open his mouth.”
“Oh, was that it? Poor Giles. He generally enjoys dressing-up.”
“Beatrice says he loves playing charades,” I said. “She told me they always have charades at Christmas.”
“I know,” said Maxim, “that’s why I’ve never spent Christmas with her.”
“Have some more asparagus, Mrs. de Winter, and another potato?”
“No, really, Frank, I’m not hungry, thank you.”
“Nerves,” said Maxim, shaking his head. “Never mind, this time tomorrow it will all be over.”
“I sincerely hope so,” said Frank seriously. “I was going to give orders that all cars should stand by for five a.m.”
I began to laugh weakly, the tears coming into my eyes. “Oh dear,” I said, “let’s send wires to everybody not to come.”
“Come on, be brave and face it,” said Maxim. “We need not give another one for years. Frank, I have an uneasy feeling we ought to be going up to the house. What do you think?”
Frank agreed, and I followed them unwillingly, reluctant to leave the cramped, rather uncomfortable little dining room that was so typical of Frank’s bachelor establishment, and which seemed to me today the embodiment of peace and quietude. When we came to the house we found that the band had arrived, and were standing about in the hall rather pink in the face and self-conscious, while Frith, more important than ever, offered refreshments. The band were to be our guests for the night, and after we had welcomed them and exchanged a few slightly obvious jokes proper to the occasion, the band were borne off to their quarters to be followed by a tour of the grounds.